Water Quality

Farm Bureau collaborates with cities, sanitation districts, stormwater agencies and other entities to protect watersheds on a comprehensive basis.

TMDL Water Quality Regulations

The Conditional Ag Waiver is not the only regulatory water quality program being applied to Ventura County agriculture. Under
a court order issued in 1999, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board continues to develop a set of pollution
standards known as Total Maximum Daily Loads, or TMDLs, for Ventura County's three major watersheds — Calleguas Creek,
the Santa Clara River and the Ventura River — as well as its coastal waters.

TMDL regulations apply to all potential sources of contamination in the watershed, including wastewater treatment plants, highways,
parks, golf courses, farms and ranches. These types of regulations include water pollution from "non-point sources" – the
diffuse runoff from agricultural fields and urban storm drains that do not have an identifiable discharge point.

As actions must be taken to measure and control polluting discharges, TMDL requirements are similar to those imposed by the
Conditional Ag Waiver. Representing agriculture to meet these regulations, VCAILG collaborates with other stakeholders
to prepare studies, conduct testing, and implement plans to improve water quality for a wide range of specific issues identified
as currently impairing local waterways. These include algae, trash, salts, metals, bacteria, pesticides, and sediment.
In recognition of the nexus between some TDMLs and the Conditional Ag Waiver program, reporting of various TMDL requirements
for agriculture contributions has been gradually consolidated into the Ag Waiver monitoring reports.

A TMDL is a calculation of the maximum amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive while still meeting standards established
by states and tribes to protect the identified beneficial uses of that water, such as municipal supply, body-contact recreation,
and support of aquatic life. A TMDL not only establishes the total amount of a single pollutant that can enter the water
body, it also divides the total load among all of the sources of that pollutant in the watershed and tells each discharger
how much it can contribute.

A. TMDL stands for Total Maximum Daily Load. It is a calculation of the maximum
amount of a pollutant that a water body can receive and still meet standards established
by states and tribes to protect the beneficial uses of that water, such as municipal supply,
body-contact recreation, agricultural irrigation and support of aquatic life. A TMDL sets
the total amount of a single pollutant that can enter the water body, divides the total
load among all of the sources of that pollutant in the watershed, and tells each discharger
how much it can contribute.

A. Sewer plants, factories and other easily identifiable sources of pollution
have long had to obtain permits regulating their waste discharges. TMDLs are primarily
a way of addressing contamination from “non-point sources” that lack an easily identifiable
discharge point, such as city streets, rangeland and farms.

A. They can be developed by state or federal agencies, or by stakeholder groups.
Regardless of how they are developed, they are implemented in California by the state’s
Regional Water Quality Control Boards following approval by the State Water Quality Control
Board and the Environmental Protection Agency.

A. Although authorized under section 303 of the Clean Water Act of 1972, TMDLs
and non-point-source pollution were largely ignored by state and federal regulatory agencies
until relatively recently. The EPA did not even adopt regulations for them until 1985,
refining those standards further in 1992; it has only been within the past decade that
enforcement has begun, largely a consequence of lawsuits by environmental organizations
seeking to force the EPA and the states to adopt TMDLs for impaired streams and lakes.
There have been about 40 such legal actions in 38 states, and the EPA is under court order
or consent decrees in many regions to ensure that TMDLs are established, either by the
state or by EPA. One such consent decree is in place for the greater Los Angeles region,
including Ventura County.

A. It starts with what regulators refer to as the “303 (d) list,” a comprehensive
listing of all impaired waters within their jurisdiction that states, territories and tribes
are required to submit periodically to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Each listing
identifies the specific pollutants for which the water fails to meet health and safety
standards. Once the pollutants have been identified, researchers conduct studies to figure
out where they are coming from, how much of each can be discharged into the watershed under
varying hydrological conditions without posing a risk, and how much each discharger will
be allowed to emit. After those studies have been completed, the TMDL limits are written,
submitted to EPA for approval and adopted by the state.

A. It varies by watershed. For Calleguas Creek, six TMDLS have been adopted:
nitrogen and algae, historic pesticides (DDT and chlordane), metals (copper, nickel, zinc,
mercury and selenium), toxicity (anything that kills aquatic life or impairs its ability
to reproduce), sediment and trash. A TMDL for salts (chloride, total dissolved solids,
boron and sulfate) is awaiting EPA approval, and one for bacteria is being developed. For
the Santa Clara River, TMDLs for chloride, nitrogen and algae have been adopted, and those
for historic pesticides, toxicity, salts and trash are in the works. For the Ventura River,
a trash TMDL is in effect, as is one for nitrogen and algae.

A. There is some overlap in the requirements for compliance, but they are
two different regulatory approaches to improving water quality. The Farm Bureau, VCAILG
and their consultants (Larry Walker Associates) are working to ensure that the monitoring
and mitigation requirements developed through the TMDL process take advantage of work already
done — and money already spent — to develop the Conditional Waiver compliance
program.

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